Buying in France from abroad
A buyer living abroad rarely underestimates the price of a French property; they underestimate the calendar. Between the accepted offer and the keys, the law sets lead times that nobody can shorten: withdrawal, the loan condition, the clearing of pre-emption. This dossier walks through them in order, with what can be prepared from afar.
By Jean Mascla, founder of Home Select Updated · 7 min read
A buyer living abroad rarely underestimates the price of a French property. They underestimate the timetable, and that is what loses acquisitions: a seller who must move out in June will not wait for a buyer whose financing starts in April.
This is the most frequent confusion, and the costliest. A written purchase offer is a firm proposal: accepted by the seller on the exact terms in which it was made, it forms the sale within the meaning of article 1583 of the Civil Code, which treats it as complete once there is agreement on the thing and the price. All that remains is to record it in writing and regularise it before a notary.
Three precautions follow. An offer always carries a short validity, five to ten days, failing which it stays open while the seller plays it against other candidates. An offer always carries the conditions you intend to include, starting with obtaining a loan: conditions absent from the offer are then negotiated from a weak position. And an offer below the asking price amounts to rejecting the seller’s proposal and making a counter-proposal, which the seller remains free to ignore, including where they had let you hope otherwise.
Before acceptance, an offer may be freely withdrawn if no validity period was stipulated. After acceptance, withdrawal is no longer possible: what remains is the withdrawal right attached to the preliminary contract.
The preliminary sale contract, or bilateral promise, binds both parties. The seller undertakes to sell, the buyer to buy, and the document settles everything: description of the property, price, annexed surveys, conditions precedent, deadline for completion, amount and fate of the escrow. It is the dominant form in ordinary sales.
The unilateral promise to sell binds the seller only, reserving the property for the buyer for a set period. The buyer pays an immobilisation indemnity for that time to think, and loses it on withdrawing without a stated ground. One technical point matters: a unilateral promise drawn up privately must be registered with the tax authorities within ten days of its acceptance, on pain of nullity, under article 1589-2 of the Civil Code. Executed before a notary, this formality disappears.
In both cases an escrow of five to ten per cent of the price is paid, into the notary’s account and not to the seller. For a non-resident buyer, this transfer is prepared before signing: it presupposes an available euro account and an international processing time counted in working days.
Article L271-1 of the Construction and Housing Code gives a non-professional buyer of a dwelling a ten-day withdrawal period, raised from seven to ten by the Act of 6 August 2015. It runs from the day after the first presentation of the recorded-delivery letter notifying the contract, or the day after it is handed over against receipt.
The period may be exercised without reason and without penalty: a recorded-delivery letter is enough, and the escrow is returned within twenty-one days. It is not there to let you change your mind for no reason, even if that is its effect. It is there to give you time to read what the preliminary contract annexes: the surveys, and above all, in a co-ownership, the minutes of the last three years’ general meetings, which announce works already voted but not yet called in.
It is the most useful moment of the whole path for an absent buyer, because it is the only one where you can still walk away at no cost. Letting it lapse without having read those documents amounts to committing blind to sums that can exceed whatever discount was negotiated.
Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Provence
The mortgage condition precedent is the most important, and it is protected: article L313-41 of the Consumer Code imposes a minimum term of one month on it, and a buyer who fails to obtain financing recovers the escrow in full. Waiving it in writing is legally possible, and sometimes asked for by a seller in a hurry: the escrow is then what is at stake, and the High Council for Financial Stability’s recommendation capping the debt-service ratio at thirty-five per cent makes that bet riskier than it looks on income earned in foreign currency.
Other conditions are added case by case: absence of a planning easement burdening the property, obtaining a permit, a cleared mortgage position. And one clearance is nearly always required, that of urban pre-emption rights: the notary sends a declaration of intent to sell to the municipality, which has two months to reply, extended to three months if it asks to visit the property or have it valued. This period is neither negotiable nor compressible.
Between accepted offer and handover of keys, allow three to four months in an ordinary file: two to four weeks to draft and sign the preliminary contract, ten days of withdrawal, one to two months of bank processing, two months of pre-emption clearance running in parallel, then the summons to the notarised deed.
Only two levers shorten this, and both are pulled upstream. The first is to arrive with financing already underway, which means having dealt with the subject before the first viewing. The second is to prepare remote signing from the preliminary contract onwards, because the notarised power of attorney and remote appearance also need their weeks of transmission. The search fee, for its part, is due only at the deed, under the rules set out in the search mandate.
What remains is to know who, around the table, is working for you: that is the subject of our comparison between buying agent and estate agent.
Home Select searches and negotiates for the buyer, and for the buyer alone. Your property finder checks the property, the building’s documents and the calendar before you commit, and flags what deserves a question to the notaire or a clause in the offer.
Around the purchase, we introduce the partners used to buyers who live abroad: bilingual notaire, mortgage broker, lawyer, sworn translator. Each acts under their own responsibility; we keep the calendar, from the offer to the handing over of the keys.
Yes, as soon as it is accepted by the seller on the exact terms in which it was made: article 1583 of the Civil Code forms the sale through agreement on the thing and the price. The buyer then keeps the ten-day withdrawal period on the preliminary contract, but cannot pull back an offer already accepted. Before acceptance, by contrast, the offer may be freely withdrawn, unless it states a validity period that has not expired.
From the day after the first presentation of the recorded-delivery letter notifying the preliminary contract, or the day after it is handed over against receipt. The period is ten calendar days; if it ends on a Saturday, Sunday or public holiday, it is extended to the next working day. Withdrawal is by recorded-delivery letter, without reason, and the escrow is returned within twenty-one days.
It is not imposed by law, but it is invariable practice: five to ten per cent of the price, paid into the drafting notary’s account, never directly to the seller. The notary holds it until the deed, where it is set off against the price. A non-resident buyer must anticipate this transfer: it presupposes a euro account and an international banking delay counted in days, not hours.
The preliminary sale contract, or bilateral promise, binds both parties. The seller undertakes to sell, the buyer to buy, and the document settles everything: description of the property, price, annexed surveys, conditions precedent, deadline for completion, amount and fate of the escrow. It is the dominant form in ordinary sales.
The mortgage condition precedent is the most important, and it is protected: article L313-41 of the Consumer Code imposes a minimum term of one month on it, and a buyer who fails to obtain financing recovers the escrow in full. Waiving it in writing is legally possible, and sometimes asked for by a seller in a hurry: the escrow is then what is at stake, and the High Council for Financial Stability’s recommendation capping the debt-service ratio at thirty-five per cent makes that bet riskier than it looks on income earned in foreign currency.
Between accepted offer and handover of keys, allow three to four months in an ordinary file: two to four weeks to draft and sign the preliminary contract, ten days of withdrawal, one to two months of bank processing, two months of pre-emption clearance running in parallel, then the summons to the notarised deed.
Further reading
From the Home Select magazine
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